Shelly Silver Savaged the Day After He Kills Congestion Pricing

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Anybody wanting to slap Sheldon Silver in the face yesterday after the Assembly speaker killed congestion pricing (ahem, Michael) may have had some satisfaction in the morning when he saw that the press did it for him. Turns out many of the city’s scribes were none too pleased with Silver for killing the mayor’s forward-thinking plan in Albany without putting it to a public vote. Some of the bestlines:

• “Rarely does one man have a chance to do so much harm to so many,” intoned the New York Times editorial board, who went on to call him “cowardly,” “opaque and narrowly political,” and “unworthy of his office.”
• The Daily News, which lambasted the Assembly speaker with a front-page headline reading “SHELLGAMEOFSHAME,” wrote a staff editorial saying he “never gave congestion pricing a fair shot.”
• NYDN columnist Michael Daly went a step further, saying that Silver “said ‘no’ to democracy.” “What Shelly doesn’t want, nobody gets,” Daly griped, asking: “Why even have the rest of the Assembly?”
• “The cynicism and dysfunction of Albany have reached new depths,” added the Newsday editorial board, who called Silver’s rejection of the plan “murder.” “It’s a dark day for New York,” they warned. “And there’s no silverlining.”

Now all that’s left to see is whether any of Silver’s voting constituents, who probably would like to see a little less traffic and pollution in their Lower East Side district, read thepapers.